International Bookworms: Favorite Local Publishers

Hello fellow bookworms! The super awesome Ayla over at Books & Babbles created this great meme, International Bookworms Meme. I'm posting a few days later because it seems that in my advanced age of 29 years I completely forgot to write my post on the actual day of the prompt. Remember how one of my resolutions was to keep a journal/some sort of calendar for my blog?

Anyway... on to the prompt.

ROMANIAN PUBLISHERS

This list is going to be long. 

• Editura Rao

The first book I ever bought with my own money was, as you probably already know, Lord Of The Rings. It was a very beautiful edition, I think it's actually the first edition that was published by Rao. As you can tell from the photo, this edition is a very well-loved (or is it mistreated?) one. I have a lot of books from them, and they generally have amazing translators. I don't think I've ever read a book from them that I didn't love or that have had me question the translator's work, which probably for a lot of people reading a translated edition of a book is a big thing. They publish a really wide range of genres, for readers of all ages, and they generally have amazing cover artists.

• Editura Polirom

Polirom is another old, but great publisher. They have books that range from contemporaries, to thrillers, to chic lit, and I saw that they also started a collection for young adult readers. You can 100% find a book you want to read from them, no matter what genre you love. They're the publishing house I always turn to when trying to find my next chic lit read, and, like with the previous publisher, have great translators. They also have promotions going on. I am not always impressed with their covers, but one awesome thing they do is that most of their books, if not all of them, come with their own matching bookmark, which the bookmark collector in my adores.

• Editura Leda

This is actually an imprint of a large publishing house, called Grupul Editorial Corint, or Corint Editorial Group for all my non-Romanian speaking friends. This is a publisher with whom I have a love-hate relationship, unfortunately. I love them for translating one of my favorite series, The Southern Vampire Mysteries, but I hate them for not completing it. This imprint is generally focused on publishing fantasy books, and they've translated a lot of series, like Richelle Mead's Vampire Academy and Cassandra Clare's The Mortal Instruments. They generally have good translators, but I can't help but be slightly miffed over their tendency to not finish translating and publishing the series they start publishing, especially when they don't always do such a great job at promoting said books. The great thing about this imprint is that they use the same cover as the original books, or at least for first editions they do that. I remember that at one time, when True Blood was still running, were in the process of publishing the TV show tie-in covers of the Sookie Stackhouse series.

• Editura Humanitas

This is another old but good publishing house. Although I've read very few of their books, I loved them. The few books I've read were written by foreign authors and I was happy I wasn't disappointed by the translations. They tend to publish what is considered as "serious literature" in my country, with a little bit of psychological erotic books. They also had, at one time, a chic lit collection, I don't know if that's still the case nowadays.

• Editura Trei

We're finally at my absolute favorite Romanian publisher ever. This publishing house started with three main genres. They were called Eroscop for their erotic books, Fiction Connection for anything not erotic, and Psihologie si Psihoterapie (a.k.a Psychology and Psychotherapy) for their psychology books. In time they grew, and now they have fantasy, history, YA books and more in their repertoire. When I was in university, they were known among us, psychology students, either for their erotic books or for their psychology books. They published books like Venus in Furs, while also a complete collection of Jung's works. It's safe to say that the books from this publishing house dominates the Romanian part of my shelves, with way over 20 books. They are also the ones that publish all of Marc Levy's books, and for that I will love them forever. They have good translators, at least for Marc Levy's works. I also have their Grisha trilogy, but either that's how the original books sound like, kind of whiny, or the translator they used for this trilogy chose this whiny-sounding language... it's strange and I don't know what to think. I also adore most of their covers, which are either very similar to the original covers for the translated books, or really cool new ones.

• Editura Nemira

This is also a good publisher in my country. I don't have as many books by them and I'm not always 100% impressed with their translations, nor with their tendencies to not finish the series they start, HOWEVER they have two awesome features. One, is that they have amazing cover artists. This is actually why I know I'll buy however many Outlander books they'll publish, even if I end up not liking the books (I still haven't finished it, sorry), because look at this gorgeousness. Two, they have a review program with rewards. Basically you submit a review on their blog of a set number of words for a new-ish book and if accepted, you would then receive a discount code to use on your next purchase from their website. Cool, right? Now, back in the day I used this feature only once (my very first ever book review, before my blog), it was profitable AND there weren't a lot of promos being run on their website or on online bookshops (which weren't that big of a thing 12 years ago).

Italian Publishers

To my great shame, I don't own as many Italian books as I probably should. Since I tend to read mostly English-speaking authors, a lot of my books are in the original language or, in some extreme cases, in Romanian. I do own a few Italian books, by Italian authors. They were published mainly by Newton Compton Editori. I can't say anything more than that, really, as I'm not that familiar with the Italian publishing system, nor with the genres that are more popular here.

Let's talk, my dear International bookworms? What are some of your favorite local publishers?